The County Board of Equalization voted to remove all land modifiers from the highly debated 2014 valuations at a meeting Tuesday.
Modifiers are factors that make land less valuable, such as rocks and poor soil, and are self-reported by townships within Grand Forks County. After landowners protested sharply higher valuations in May, the Soils Committee sought to find a solution by letting some townships redo their modifier maps.
But Director of Tax Equalization Amber Gudajtes said those maps came back too heavily modified and so the only “fair and equal” solution was to remove them completely from this year’s calculations, even though one landowner spoke out against it at the meeting.
The board also voted to accept new digitized non-cropland maps that paint a more accurate picture of the land. Gudajtes said she reviewed those maps with 29 townships and all of them approved. Six townships didn’t come in and six didn’t respond to her attempts to make contact.
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Gudajtes said her department will mail out new valuation calculations Monday and Tuesday.
The board will meet again July 15.
